Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote (if a few years be, indeed, to be called remote), but even now present before us; even now suffered or enjoyed.  Even now we are alive unto God or dead unto God; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we are, in the highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead.  In the highest possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that highest possible sense of the terms is?  So much has, indeed, been revealed to us, that we know now that death means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means a conscious and perpetual life.  But greatly, indeed, do we deceive ourselves, if we fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also risen to the infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths, contained in those little words, life and death.  They are far higher, and far deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to.  But, even on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us a foretaste of what is beyond.  Even to us in this mortal state, even to you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey, life and death have a meaning:  to be dead unto God or to be alive to him, are things perceptibly different.

For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most separate from him, and most without him, whether there is not now actually, perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness, the loneliness, the fearfulness of death?  I do not ask them whether they are made unhappy by the fear of God’s anger; of course they are not:  for they who fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them.  The thought of him gives them no disquiet at all; this is the very point we start from.  But I would ask them whether they know what it is to feel God’s blessing, For instance:  we all of us have our troubles of some sort or other, our disappointments, if not our sorrows.  In these troubles, in these disappointments,—­I care not how small they may be,—­have they known what it is to feel that God’s hand is over them; that these little annoyances are but his fatherly correction; that he is all the time loving us, and supporting us?  In seasons of joy, such as they taste very often, have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from his hand, and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of his love?  Sickness, danger,—­I know that they come to many of us but rarely; but if we have known them, or at least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in its graver,—­ have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father’s hands, that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing can hurt those whom he loves?  Surely, then, if we have never tasted anything of this:  if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is no voice that ever